Home on the range

By Robin Dearing

Saturday, Bill and I had our very dear friends over for dinner followed by a good long chat around the fire pit on our giant boulder in our backyard. As we are wont to do, we laughed a lot and eventually decided that we need to shoot some guns.

What? You don't get together with friends for dinner and then decide to shoot guns? We never did either, until Saturday night. But make plans to shoot guns, we did.

Sunday, we loaded up a bunch of the guns I inherited from my dad along with the re-usable grocery bag full of ammo and headed to the convenience store.

What? You don't stop at the convenience store for soda and candy before you shoot guns? OK, this was also a first for us. But it seemed more 'Merican to have a giant vat of sugary drinks to accompany our shooting of the guns.

Finally equipped with the accountrement of a shooting day, we bumped our way into the desert to the rifle range.

The range was full of like-minded folk (sans soda; I guess it's just how liberal academics shoot guns), but we found a spot and set up. As we were getting out of the car, Kristen said with a straight face, "If shooting is anything like archery on the Wii, then I should be good at this."

And you know what? Apparently shooting is just like archery on the Wii. Kristen had never shot a gun before, but hit the target with the rifle on her first round. We proved that in fact video game skillz do translate to real-world activities.

Even though I decided to not shoot (I'm still have trouble not flinching every time someone fired a weapon), it was a beautiful afternoon of watching people shoot stuff with guns which we followed with beers at Hooters.

As an aside, I would like to say that the costumes the Hooters girls wear are so sadly outdated. Who wears suntan pantyhose with shorts and scrunched up socks? No one since 1987. I think the fine women of Hooters need to stage a pantyhose protest.

Yes, so guns. Here are some pics of the gun shooters. Notice the gorgeous fall light on the Bookcliffs. Oh, Grand Valley, I love you so.

I love this one with Kristen and the shotgun. She's pretending to shoot zombies.